Glasnevin Cemetery is a nondenominational cemetery in Ireland, first opened in 1832.
The brainchild of Catholic rights leader Daniel O’Connell, it was established as a place where people of all religions could bury their dead, in response to the lack of Catholic cemeteries and the restrictions placed on Catholic services by the eighteenth century Penal Laws.
The cemetery contains the graves of the Sheehy-Skeffingtons – the atheist, feminist and Irish nationalist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, her husband, the atheist, pacifist, suffragist and writer, Francis, and their son, Owen, a founder member of the Irish Humanist Association.
The cemetery was one of the few cemeteries that allowed stillborn and unbaptised babies to be buried in consecrated ground and its ‘Angels Plot’ was dedicated to this purpose.
Its crematorium, opened in 1982, was the first in the Republic of Ireland.
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